“Did you know,” Miguel asked, tilting his head, “that the black widow is the deadliest spider in America? At times, the female eats the male after mating, hence her name.”
He could’ve gone without that visual.
Impatience dogged him as he probed the pond and surrounding trees, his temper growing short. “I paid a lot of goddamn money for that girl, and you fucked me over. If this is how you do business, I will—”
“Careful.” Miguel’s accent sharpened. “A smart man would think twice before making threats against La Rocha.”
“Fuck you. Where’s my property?” As the insensitive question left his lips, he detected a disturbance at the center of the pond. His pulse lost rhythm, spiraling turbulently, his eyes refusing to adjust in the darkness. “What’s out there in the water?”
“The black widow’s bite is venomous.” Miguel slid a hand down his tie, needlessly straightening it. “But not usually deadly to humans. A single bite doesn’t have the potency. But many bites? Dozens attacking at once, especially when threatened? That would be fatal to a small woman. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” He chuckled. “Nature is not merciful.”
Tension breathed down his neck, and vertigo threatened to buckle his legs.
Spiders.
A pond of tenebrous water.
Nothing foreboding about that.
Put Vera in the middle of it, and they couldn’t have orchestrated a more sinister nightmare.
If the desired effect was to scare the ever-loving fuck out of him, job well done. His throat felt like smoldering ash, his chest a cavern of dry ice.
But he only showed them the man he wanted them to see—an arrogant prick whose time was invaluable. “Get to the point.”
“Omar.” Miguel nodded at his brother.
Omar flicked on a portable spotlight. The blinding beam shot across the pond, illuminating two shapes at the center.
An unfamiliar man sat in a kayak with a paddle resting across his lap. A few feet from him, a small dome floated on the surface, wrapped in some sort of metal mesh, like the screening material in windows. It allowed in airflow and light, but little else.
He didn’t have to look closer to know what he’d find inside. The contraption was only slightly larger than a human head, and that was what it held.
Vera’s head.
With her body submerged to her neck—presumably anchored to the floor of the pond—her eyes squeezed shut against the glare of the spotlight. Her mouth angled above the water, but she couldn’t shout or make a sound because her lips were stretched open by a spider gag.
The metal ring sat behind her teeth, holding her jaw in a gaping O. A buckle secured it around her head, and four steel legs fanned out from the ring. Those curved legs extended over her chin and cheeks, preventing her from turning the ring in her mouth while forcing her jaw wide open to accept anything into her throat. Like probing fingers. Or a cock.
Or a black widow spider.
His stomach churned. His heartbeat tightened, and his insides ran too hot and too cold as he fought the excessive need to swallow. He couldn’t trust himself to speak without a quaking voice.
“She can put her head underwater.” Marco stepped to Luke’s side, his dark features ever darker in the thickness of night. “Though I don’t think she’d enjoy that. Have you ever tried to keep your throat closed while your mouth is held open underwater?”
He’d learned many survival tricks during his time in Van’s attic. But nothing related to water play.
“She can’t dislodge the mesh hood,” Marco said. “It’s connected to her life vest. Her hands are bound, and her feet are tied to a cement block, keeping her vertical.”
“Why?” He girded his backbone, forcing strength in his tone. “What’s the point of this?”
“We don’t trust you, John Smith.”
“I assure you,” Luke scoffed, “after this double-crossing bullshit, the feeling is fucking mutual.”
“We haven’t double-crossed you. We’re merely being cautious. See, we investigated you, as we do with all our guests, and we can’t find a single piece of information about you.”
“I didn’t give you a real name.”
“No one does. We use facial recognition software. You can’t hide your face in public these days. Not with all the cameras spying and recording your every move. Except you’ve done exactly that. It’s as if you don’t exist, and that makes you…questionable.”
Luke had fallen out of the system when he ran away from home. When Van abducted him, no one knew he was missing. No one cared. He was as good as dead. After he escaped, he remained dead. He never used his real name. Never had an encounter with the law. When Cole Hartman joined their team, he erased all of the Freedom Fighters from every hidden corner of the Internet and dark web.
None of them existed.
“This shouldn’t surprise you.” Luke squared his shoulders, watching Vera hold her shit together at the center of the pond. “If a man has the means to spend three-million dollars on a slave, he should certainly be able to cover his tracks effectively.”